made the giant hairpiece look even more unconvincing, but I don’t think it occurred to anybody to teach me how to draw them in.
For a few days I wore the wig around the house to get used to it. The lining scratched my head so my lovely Aunty Denny kindly sewed a handkerchief into it.
And then one morning I tottered up the road to the primary school where I had been going every day for six years – but now with a colossal bloody wig on my head and even more self-conscious than I had been without it.
Head down, I walked across the playground. Suddenly, without saying a word, one of the tough boys in the year above me ran past, whipped it off and threw it on the ground. I picked it up in tears and hurried off to seek the comfort of a teacher.
I persisted with the wig for a few more days, but summer was approaching and it was just too hot and uncomfortable. I would slip it on and take it off as if it were a hat. Before long I was passing it round the class, letting everyone have a go.
Matt 1 Wig 0.
Poor Wiggy. It was only trying to help. Instead it found itself unceremoniously tossed into a cupboard, where it stayed until I could find a better use for it.
Years later, well into adulthood, I was speaking to a doctor who asked me how I had lost my hair. I told him the story about being knocked down by the car and how it had been assumed that it was the shock that had made it fall out two years later. It was a story I had recounted so many times that it was gospel to me now. I no longer questioned it.
But he did.
He asked me if I had asthma, eczema, hay fever or allergies. I said yes, funnily enough, the lot – chronically.
He said that my hair loss was most likely the consequence of my having an over-active immune system, one that was constantly fighting, even when it had nothing specific to beat. No one could say exactly what had made it ‘reject’ the hair but it wasn’t necessarily anything as dramatic as being knocked down by a car.
I asked him what the significance of having this over-active immune system was and how it was likely to affect me.
‘Um, well, you’ll probably never get cancer, actually.’
For a brief moment I felt like a superhero. Then he added, ‘But there’s about fifty-five other things that might well get you, I’m afraid.’
I took a deep breath. ‘So it’s a shorter life?’
He shrugged. ‘You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.’
‘Wouldn’t be the end of the world,’ I replied. ‘Maybe the shock would make my hair grow back.’
C – Chumley
The bespectacled, frizzy-haired Chigwell housewife stood in front of us, recounting her life story. She talked about school, her first job, how she met her husband. It was all going swimmingly.
‘And then I was raped.’
We gasped.
‘Well, no, I wasn’t, but I wish I had been.’
Another gasp.
She continued her loose, improvised monologue for another minute or two, but we were now too shocked to laugh. As she came to an end, we applauded uncertainly, then turned as one to Ivor, who was running this stand-up comedy class.
‘Thank you, Pamela. Um, very good. Yes.’
Not much seemed to faze Ivor, but it took him a moment to work out how to respond.
‘Some nice observations there. If I had any criticism, I would say that, while there are no taboos in comedy as such, the “rape” line did take us all a bit by surprise. I felt that perhaps we found it hard to laugh again after that.’
We nodded our heads in agreement.
Summer 1992. Like some of my friends, I had opted to take a year out after my A levels. Unlike my friends, however, many of whom were travelling around the world, I had decided to launch myself on the London stand-up comedy circuit.
My teenage passion for performing had continued unabated. The year after my Edinburgh Festival experience, I’d bagged a background role in a West End play. Two years after that, at sixteen, I joined the National Youth Theatre – which mainly did Shakespeare and more serious stuff than the NYMT.
In the National Youth Theatre I had met a funny guy called David Williams, who was a few years older than me. (I’ll tell you more about that later, of course.) David and his friend Jason Bradbury were doing ‘open spots’ on the comedy circuit – unpaid five-minute slots for aspiring acts – and I’d follow them around. Sometimes they went down a storm; other times you could almost see the tumbleweed – but I thought they were hilarious and I dreamed of being a stand-up comic too.
Ivor Dembina’s stand-up comedy course was incredibly helpful. Not only did we get to write and test out routines on each other, building them up week by week, but Ivor also taught us how the alternative comedy circuit worked: no sexist, racist or homophobic material, don’t go over your time, don’t nick anyone’s gags and don’t badmouth other acts because you don’t know who’s friendly with who.
The only sticking point was that I had an idea for a character that I wanted to try out, but Ivor wouldn’t let me. His reasoning was that we should be ourselves onstage. I was happy to do that on the course, but I knew that, as soon as I was playing the circuit itself, I would appear in character.
There were a few character comedians on the circuit and they were always my favourites to watch. As much as I enjoyed the observational comics, I had no desire at all to be one. I didn’t want to walk out and do gags about being bald and I didn’t have a girlfriend to talk about. I wanted to perform – to show off – but I wanted to do it in the guise of someone else.
And I had a character in mind – well, not really a character, more just a silly voice at that stage. Throughout my childhood I would both entertain and ultimately rile my mum and brother by doing silly voices. I’d often fixate on one and then get consumed by it for weeks. For a time I couldn’t stop being Jack Wild in Oliver! After I returned from the Edinburgh Festival I was Miss Jean Brodie.
‘Okay, that’s enough now!’ Mum would say, her patience wearing thin once again, especially if I was supposed to be studying for my bar mitzvah or mowing the lawn.
I had been a massive fan of Harry Enfield and had loved a spoof South Bank Show documentary he’d made, called Norbert Smith – A Life. Enfield played the subject – formerly the defining young actor of his generation, rather like Lord Olivier, and now a sweet, befuddled old man.
There were various interviewees in the film – characters who had supposedly worked with Sir Norbert and who shared their recollections. One of them – played by Moray Watson – was called Sir Donald Stuffy, seemingly a nod to a couple of other famous theatrical Donalds: Sinden and Wolfit. During his scenes he told long-winded anecdotes and appropriated the names of other actors. For instance, Dame Anna Neagle became ‘Dame Anna Neagly Weagly’ and Rex Harrison was ‘Rexipoo Harrison’. He was the ultimate ‘luvvie actor’ and even though he only appeared onscreen for a minute or two, my brother Howard and I thought he was the funniest thing in the show.
I’d impersonate all the characters in the programme, but whenever I did Sir Donald Stuffy’s voice it seemed to amuse Howard the most. I did it so often that it wasn’t long before I stopped quoting lines from the programme and started using him as a vessel for my own jokes instead.
Gradually I built up a biography for the character – shows he’d been in, his friends, his agent, where he lived, until it felt like my own. Howard proposed the name Sir Bernard Chumley, which stuck.
If Ivor wasn’t too sure about me appearing in character – at least, on his course – my mother had greater concerns.